Advanced tables of contents

The best place to start is with a custom style. By default, Word builds TOCs from text formatted with built-in heading styles. But you can also tell Word to look for other styles, including ones that you create.

Map a custom style to a TOC level

Let’s say we want to add brief descriptions under each heading entry. To do that, we’ll use a custom style.

Select the text that we want to appear in the Table of Contents. The text is now formatted as Normal with the rest of the paragraph.

Open Styles gallery > Create a Style > OK.

Click ahead of the Table of Contents. Then, open the Table of Contents gallery, and click Custom Table of Contents > Options.

The first three Heading Styles are mapped to the first three TOC levels. Scroll down to the new style, and map it to level 4, and click OK.

The preview now shows the new style under Heading 3. Click OK > Yes to replace the current table.